Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

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EVENTS

Growing up, I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — the comics, the cartoons, the video games, the movies, everything. Who am I kidding — I still do. I always wondered how the Renaissance artists after whom the Turtles were named would react to the idea of having ninjas — who were also mutated turtles, mind! — named after them, having their names’ value polluted for at minimum an entire generation.

Well, apparently so too did the folks in charge of Epic Rap Battles of History.

Fair warning — these rap battles often use problematic language, including this one which has a brief (but rather tame) instance: “you guys draw more dicks than New York Pride”.

The Turtle costume used in this video is awesome.

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Ania Bula and Alexander Gonzalez of Scribbles and Rants are doing a fundraiser to get to Women In Secularism 3. Well, they WERE, until some kind soul paid for their and Miranda’s tickets. Now Ania’s asking for help funding the fundraiser so she can table as well.

Thanks to a generous donation, Alex, Miranda, and my tickets have been taken care of. As such, I am going to up the ante a little bit. If I make my goal, I will use the money that would have gone towards buying a ticket to purchase a table at the con and sell my artwork and a variety of other products of mine. In return, I will donate a percentage of my profits (from the con table) to either the con itself, or to help out the fundraisers of great people to be able to move to safer places.

Considering she’s doing some quite wall-worthy art, it might be worth your time and effort to help her succeed in this endeavour.

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There were several tense moments when Glendon’s various devices all failed him in series; and when Anne’s internet connection completely failed her early on. But Amy, forced to fill time, did a pretty good job of keeping the panel together. Even through the sake! And a few lucky folks won some free Surlys, to boot.

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Amanda Palmer talks about how she’s monetized her art in a non-traditional manner, and how much success she has had and how much money she has made despite giving her music away for free.

Her husband had some words about piracy that dovetail beautifully with Amanda’s philosophy. They got me to thinking — how much do we really value the things that we get without paying for them?[Read more…]

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Ever wanted some artwork you could hang on your wall that would please both art connoisseurs and video game fanatics alike? Jed Henry has you covered. On his tumblr, he’s released three pieces of art rendering classic video game characters in ukiyo-e style, reimagining their most recognizable traits as the accoutrement of great samurai warriors.

To wit, Samus’ blaster is a severed dragon head tied to her arm:

The other two characters he’s done so far are Link and Megaman, both of which are incredible. Can’t wait to see what’s next. He’s evidently planning a kickstarter in August, to which I’ll almost certainly donate what I can. I would love the hell out of large bamboo scroll versions of these.

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I don’t know about you, but every time I saw Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, my one overriding thought was, “damn but she’s fat. She should be skinnier“.

Okay, I can’t even really say that facetiously. Sorry. My sarcasm is broken.

It's rather difficult for me to imagine anyone telling this lady she needs to shave off a few pounds.

So Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano undertook a project to redesign many of art history’s greatest nude paintings, in order to bring them into closer alignment with how “beauty” is defined by today’s society. The result is a number of paintings of beautiful women who are, simply put, beautiful for completely different reasons.[Read more…]

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A day late, but yesterday was spent on cuddles and sushi so I hope you’ll forgive me for posting this today. My wife Jodi and I just celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Video of the ceremony is available, and of course, if you’re interested in the proposal, visit Stephanie’s, where she very much played Cupid, with an assist from that old softie PZ Myers himself.

Stephanie’s husband Ben helped take a picture that we never got on our wedding, of the necklace that the amazing, talented and amazingly talented Bohemian Weasel, Soni Alcorn-Hender, made for her. Considering all of the artistic talent, and the model, of course I feel the need to highlight it here.